Is it Real?
by LoLisdead
Summary: It's halfway through the summer holidays at the Dursleys. At the unlikely hour of 2AM Harry Potter wakes up to a tapping on his window, and a letter he can hardly believe. Drarry-ish. Rated T for profanity and implied drug use. Rates and reviews are welcome, let me know if you believe I should continue!


_Tap tap tap … Hoot!_

Harry Potter groaned as he peeled his eyes open and sniffed violently—his nose felt like a fucking landslide, and he knew he couldn't really complain about it. He still felt a bit jittery. He peeked at the time though half open eyes and read it was 2AM on Wednesday morning. When did he even fall asleep? And why on the goddamn floor?

Hedwig was watched his bedroom window curiously, as if there was something strange outside. Harry began shuffling over to his window, rubbing his eyes and groaning—he felt like complete shit. He yawned and his head began to rush, he held his forehead and moaned as he waited for it to pass before continuing his journey to his window.

 _Probably Pig,_ Harry thought, _Ron knows to only send letters to me at night._

He looked out the window and found that was most definitely not Pig—this was an owl that looked the exact opposite of Pig.

This owl patiently waited outside as it curiously looked inside its new, unknown destination. It was at least ten times the size of Pig and was obviously not a Hogwarts owl as well. Harry let this new owl inside his bedroom and jumped out of his skin as the owl opened its two huge wings to fly inside, barely fitting though the window.

The owl looked much more like an eagle than an owl, in Harry's opinion. He felt as though he should've known whose owl it was, but his drowsy and still semi-fucked brain just wasn't putting together the obvious.

The eagle owl held out a letter to Harry obediently; Harry took the letter from its strong talons and thanked it quietly. Before he could even look down at the letter in his hands, however, Hedwig made a quiet hoot and stared at the vast, new eagle owl.

What happened next made Harry begin to think that this was all either some sort of dream or drug-induced hallucination. The eagle owl hooted happily at the site of Hedwig and flew over to her cage. It began to cluck happily, Hedwig returning the favor—it was as if they were old friends revisiting each other. Old friends that were making enough noise to wake up the sleeping Dursley's down the hall.

Harry hushed the owls, and both of them piped down immediately, sensing Harry's fear. After listening carefully to make sure no Dursley had been awoken from their beauty sleep, he eyed the delivered letter in suspicion. This made his nerves tingle, this didn't feel _right_.

There was no trace of writing on the outside, Harry slowly opened the seal and braced himself for some sort of stupid, cheap joke product to go off.; no such thing happened. He broke the seal and unrolled a smooth piece of parchment. The sender's handwriting was neat and oddly slanted to the left.

Potter,  
I apologize if this letter reaches you at an ungodly hour, I'm not aware of your address and I'm counting on Hazlett (my family's owl) to locate you, so I have no idea how long his journey will be.

I am wondering if you had begun your essay for the new professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts? Neither I nor any of my peers have had any luck with it, and you're the only one I could think of to contact about it. I wonder who the new professor is, and why they would assign an essay midway through the summer holidays. That, and why the assignment was bewitched to appear with our school books instead of by post.

I invite you to visit my home so we can work through this dreadful summer work together—if you'd wish to assist me, that is. Just let me know when you'll be stopping by so I can make arrangements on how to sneak you into my house. I think it'd be best if we kept this meeting quiet from mother & father.

 **Draco Malfoy  
** PS, Bring your Firebolt, maybe we can brush up on our Quidditch skills as well.

Harry hadn't realized his jaw was hung open until after about the third time rereading the letter. He then proceeded to slap himself across the face, _hard_. After deciding it was indeed not a dream—because the numbing pain on the right side of his face was very much real—he slowly looked up and down, from Hazlett (who was now perched at the end of his bed, still watching Hedwig), back down to the letter (which was lying on his bed, it had feel out of his hands quite a while ago), and back up to Hazlett again. His eyebrows were furrowed as the gears slowly cranked in his head, trying to deduct some sort of decent explanation for this madness.

Ron's family got a new owl from the Owl Emporium in Diagon Ally, that Hedwig happened to know from the time she was there, to replace Errol and Ron was trying to play some sort of sick prank on him.

Yep, that was definitely it. No questioning it.

Even though this well-groomed, extravagantly beautiful owl was unlike anything the Weasley's would be able to afford, and the handwriting in the letter looked absolutely nothing like Ron's handwriting, Harry's sleepy, shocked brain completely convinced him that it was indeed Ron Weasley pranking him.

He had convinced himself that it was Ron to the point that he pulled a lined sheet of paper out of his bedside table and quickly scribbled across the sheet

HAHA, very funny Ron, you arse.

because there was no way in _hell_ that _Draco Malfoy_ was asking _Harry Potter_ for help on a summer holiday's essay, and offering him to sneak into his house without Malfoy expecting Harry to believe it wasn't a trap to hand him over to Voldemort. The only reason he would've asked Harry to bring his Firebolt would be so he could steal it for himself afterwards. _"Brush up our Quidditch skills_ "? Yeah right, like Malfoy would admit that Harry was better than him at Quidditch and could use a few lessons from him, Ron needed to try harder than this next time. And when's the last time a _new teacher_ could assign all their students homework halfway through the holidays? That just seemed illegal and cruel.

Harry didn't even fold or seal the paper, he just handed the flimsy sheet of paper to Hazlett.

The eagle owl (who's apparently never handled muggle paper before, because he inspected the piece of paper for a few moments) gave one last look at Hedwig to hoot goodbye and then took off into the night back to the Burrow, where a soon to be disappointed Ron Weasley would be.

Harry skimmed over the completely bizarre letter one last time before folding it and laying it onto his bedside table. He crawled underneath his covers and stared up at the bland ceiling above him, feeling strangely awake. Probably because he slapped himself.

He sighed and shook his head, as if that could clear it of his curiosity the mysterious letter gave him. He hoped Ron would reply as soon as he could—it probably wouldn't take long for Hazlett to fly there and back again, considering his size and all. Maybe he'd just stay up and wait for Hazlett to return? There is the chance that Ron sent the letter and went back to sleep, however.

Harry decided to pretend to play "what if", as if Malfoy had actually sent the letter. If he did, why didn't he specify what the essay was about, besides Defense Against the Dark Arts? Would it be a trap, or would Malfoy have been serious? If he was serious, he probably would've been using the Quidditch invitation as bait for Harry to come—he probably knows Harry isn't able to practice Quidditch over the summer, because practically everybody by now knows he lives with Muggles. Obviously Malfoy's Quidditch skills shouldn't need a "brush up", he could go and practice whenever he wanted. He can probably get away with using magic outside of school during the holidays as well.

Lucky git.

Harry huffed in frustration, shoving the bit of jealousy he began to feel towards Malfoy for being able to stay in touch with the Wizarding world away. He turned on his side, scowling.

Why was he even thinking about Malfoy, as if he had actually sent Harry that letter?

Harry used the easy excuse of "it must be the leftover coke in my system" and then began drifting away to a dreamless sleep…


End file.
